Edith Ndlovu today ... Reflecting on the role Nelson Mandela played in her own life story.Source: Supplied

A young Edith ... 'We accepted it. That was the problem.'Source: Supplied

Not everyone could be Nelson Mandela. For most South Africans involved in the struggle against Apartheid, theirs was a personal battle. They were not organised politically and suffered the everyday humiliations of segregation as part of life.

Edith Ndlovu, who worked for white families as a domestic and is now in her 60s, a free woman, says she did not hate whites or envy them.

"We accepted it," she says. "That was the problem."

It wasn't until she started making close friendships with whites from foreign embassies in her hometown of Pretoria, in the 1970s, that she began to see her life as far from normal.

Her father was a black police sergeant. She remembers him coming home, in 1960, crying and traumatised. He had been at the Sharpeville Massacre, when police turned their guns on people protesting the pass laws that required them to carry ID, killing 69.

"He said he could not stand to see his own people dying, especially when he was acting against them," she says. But even then, she says her parents did not instruct her in the wrongs of Apartheid. Nor did her school or church.

Edith recalls being in Pretoria, in her early 20s, when police vehicles screamed into a shopping area demanding that blacks produce their pass books.

"Guys were running everywhere but I did not run," she says. "There was this Sergeant Botha. He asked me, 'Where's your ID?' I said it was at home. He said 'Get in the van, fat bum.'"

A young Edith ... parents, chruches and schools were not teaching young black South Africans that apartheid was wtong.Source: Supplied

Sergeant Botha took her to the home of her white masters, and accompanied her to her private quarters, where she produced her ID. He then asked her to strip. "You see, he liked my fat bum," she laughs. When she refused to comply, Botha took her to jail.

Edith says the architects of Apartheid created an unintended outcome. "Because of the restraining orders and morality laws, it made white guys lust after black girls. When they got a black girl, it was like a trophy."

Edith would later get involved with a white man, and knew the risks. But in her earlier years, perhaps because of her personal poverty, she did not consider fighting the oppression of segregation by joining the group struggle. The struggle was life itself.

She saw people as good or bad. And the strictures of segregation were so pervasive they were considered unbreakable. You just had to get on with it.

"In my own perspective," Edith says, "I was aware of Mandela and the struggle. But I saw my struggle as individual, not collective. I would go into white shops, and use white toilets. I was just a bold person.

"At clothing shops, you were not allowed to fit the clothes, you had to guess your size. If you took it home and it didn't fit, you were not allowed to take it back.

"At the cafes, you had to buy through the window around the back. You were not allowed to get inside the shop. It took a long time, because when white people came in they stopped serving you and left you outside in the sun."

At nights, there would be random visits from police, checking that every black resident was accounted for in their own home.

Individual struggle... Edith as a young woman.Source: Supplied

"There are so many things they did to try to control black people," Edith says.

"In town, you were not allowed to be walking in the streets of Pretoria past 6pm. The town would be cleaned out; no black person would be allowed. The toilets were whites-only. If you were pressed, it was a disaster. There was no toilet for black people."

With anti-Apartheid leaders jailed or exiled, Edith says her awakenings came slowly, until the point she realised that, purely by her existence as a black woman, she was part of the struggle.

That was why she went to pay her last respects to Mandela as he lay in state at Pretoria's Union Buildings this week, to show her love and give thanks to a man whose personal sacrifice explained so much about her own life.

Edith first saw the inside of a white home as a child, when she went to help her aunt, who worked as a domestic for an Afrikaans family. When she grew up, she saw becoming a domestic as a great opportunity and found a place with a Jewish family.

"I had to be prepare breakfast from six, then make beds, clean the house, feed the dogs," she says. "Even now I hate dogs. A dog was better than me. They could jump on the master's bed and sleep. Me, I was not even allowed to use a glass to drink water. I had to use a jam can.

"For lunch I'd get a small slice of meat and some porridge. In the evening I would grill thick steaks for them and make delicious food. I got a slice of bread. I would go to bed starving."

The mistress cut and buttered Edith's bread, to ensure Edith did not get too much. Being bold, she confronted her mistress, telling her that she needed to eat. "As time went on, she adjusted. When she went out for dinner, she would say, 'There's a smoked chicken in the fridge, help yourself.'

The architects of Apartheid feared one thing above all: love and friendship between black and whites, and the chance it would diminish the purity of the Afrikaans race. Everyone was under suspicion of having sex. It was because of this that Edith was sacked from her Jewish home.

Edith had in her spare time been acting with a theatre group, which brought her into contact with whites from the Swedish legation and German embassy. They treated her as a friend, arriving to pick her up for parties and dinners.

Black domestics in neighbouring white homes accused her of being a prostitute. And an Afrikaans neighbour was also observing her comings and goings. He complained to Edith's masters. "They were so afraid of him they fired me," she says.

Edith got a job with a German couple. "Mike and Margaret would not allow me to call them Boss, Madam or Sir. They wanted me to call them by their names, and we used to share the dinner table. And I always dressed my best, not in the uniform of a maid."

This arrangement changed when the couple's Afrikaans friends came to dinner. They strongly objected to Edith's presence at the table, so she learned to disappear when they visited.

An Englishwoman who lived next door to the German couple was taken by Edith and would invite her around for afternoon tea, to talk as equals. They were served by the Englishwoman's black domestics.

"They resented me so much," says Edith. "One night they came over and attacked me in my quarters, saying, 'Who do you think you are?' I had to fight them off."

When Margaret became ill and needed to return to Germany for treatment, it became a matter of gossip that Edith was sleeping with Mike, her employer. She wasn't.

"The police would turn up unannounced at night to see if I was sleeping with Mike, breaking the morality laws. Mike would lead them back to my quarters and show them that I was sleeping by myself."

During a period when she was working in a furniture shop, a white banker became infatuated with Edith.

"When he phoned me I would shiver. I could be arrested for talking to him. I said, 'You are white and I am black, you know it's not allowed.' He said, 'I don't care. As long as I can have you it's all I want.'

"Every time when I went to visit him, it was a terrifying time. I did not enjoy being there. We were never caught, fortunately. He would have got a small sentence; I would have got more. After Apartheid, he became more free. He wanted more black girls and he was no longer faithful with me.

"We got engaged, but he never wanted us to get married. I did not know whether I was his girlfriend, fiancee, or his prostitute."

Asked whether she attributes South Africa's freedoms directly to Mandela, she says: "To a lot of people. But he was the leader. Mandela really laid his life down. He did not compromise even when he was offered to leave jail."

She says holds no ill feelings to Sergeant Botha, or any of her oppressors. That was the great lesson of Mandela. "They had their fun. It's over now."

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